I agree there are “too many people in college,” but only in a sense. I don’t believe higher education should be exclusionary, in the sense that it is inaccessible to people who want access to it. Knowledge and literacy are the only weapons that can actually make people free, and they should be available to everyone. So I don’t buy into any theoretical limitations on how may should be there. Ideally the whole civilization should desire, pursue, and attain a “higher” education (admittedly, a slippery term).
I think there are “too many,” though, in the sense that not all of the bodies occupying seats in the academy are really there for that “higher” education itself, but for some other reason. Sowell rightly points out several of these. We can all relate to this from our AU days as well as any post-graduate studying we may have done.
It’s no big secret that the academy has been drifting steadily and inexorably from an enlightening/enriching model to an industrial/corporate training model for decades (1970 was the last time more than half of college students had liberal arts majors). But the situation has shifted so far toward “training good little workers” that traditional educational goals—critical thinking, moral reflection, civic responsibility—seem antiquated and irrelevant to the culture at large. I imagine that even in the Middle Ages, university students resented having to study certain subjects. But a huge portion of the students I teach honestly think history, philosophy, political science, foreign language, literature, and art courses are just ploys by the university to get their money (not coincidentally, those students usually only produce the most superficial, banal work). Perhaps things look a bit worse to me because of where I’m working: KSU-Tuscarawas is a remote, rural branch that only has a handful of majors, all of which are “vocational.” (That’s not to say I don’t get some absolutely awesome students—most of whom are non-traditional students with full time jobs and families—but core classes are generally looked at with raised eyebrows.)
There’s evidence things aren’t much different elsewhere. John Sperling, CEO of the company that brought you University of Phoenix, offers this enlightened assessment: “This is a corporation […] Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop [students’] value systems or go in for that ‘expand their minds’ bullshit.” If this ethos is representative of our view of higher ed, then it’s no wonder so many students are simply keeping seats warm (and trying to get laid, or playing Warcraft all day in the dorm, or whatever).
Maybe this is the problem: the intrinsic “value” of an education is self-evident to those who have one, but it’s a tough sell to those who don’t already see it. Nearly all of the messages we are bombarded with appeal to instant gratification and transient pleasure. Contemplating Plato’s Philosopher King or identifying with Hamlet’s indecision aren’t easily packaged in those terms, so why bother with them? Since I’m just going to be a nurse, thinking about Federalism is a waste of my time.
I really think that if students could pay the fee and pick up a degree at a drive-thru, they would. I think it sucks.
(And there has never been, nor can there ever be, a “non-politicized” education.)
